Today, we’re introducing Google Drive — a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your work. Whether you’re drawing up floor plans with a client, creating a presentation with classmates or planning next year’s budget with colleagues, Drive makes it easy to work together. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.

But that consumery-feature appeal has a shirt and tie on (read: geared for business), or at least a polo and khakis, as it is being pitched as part of Google Apps for Business:

We know you rely on your files to get work done every day. Drive uses the same infrastructure as other Google Apps services, meaning it also has the same admin tools, security and reliability, including:

Centralized management: New tools available in the Apps control panel for administrators to add or remove storage for individuals or teams of users.

Security: Encryption on data transfer between your browser and our servers, and optional 2-step verification that prevents unauthorized account access by having users sign in with a secure code from their mobile phone.

Data Replication: Simultaneous data replication in multiple data centers, so that in the unlikely event that one data center is unavailable, your files will still be safe and accessible.

Uptime: 99.9% uptime guarantee so you can be confident that your files will be available whenever you need them.

Support: 24/7 support for assistance when you need it.

Each Google Apps user will, as rumored, get 5GB of storage included, “and administrators can centrally purchase and manage more.” Google Apps for Business account managers can buy storage as it’s needed: 20GB for $4 per month, to as much as 16TB.

When can you, Joe or Jane Consumer, get it? Sign up to be notified when it’s available. But for those in shirt and tie (or the business casual) can start now: “Starting today, Google Apps administrators will see new controls for Drive in the control panel. Users at organizations on the Rapid Release track will be able to opt-in to Drive at drive.google.com/start.”

For more info on Google Drive, see the company’s post, which has full details of what it involves — think Google integration, search — and also see Google’s video:

Already, with the shoe having dropped, cloud storage folks are weighing in:

Egnyte CEO Vineet Jain:

“Google Drive is a welcome addition to the cloud storage wars, because as they battle with the likes of Dropbox, Box and iCloud, the consumer will only benefit through increased competition for better, faster and cheaper file backup,” Jain wrote to Cloudline. “There will be some spill over effect onto the business world through innovations related ease of use, but ultimately it helps differentiate between consumer and business grade products. The race to the bottom on price, value and simplicity will brightly contrast business focused products that offer security, scalability, IT controls and in our case, the benefits of a hybrid cloud-based solution.”

And partners are queued up:

“Smartsheet is already adding an extra gear to its transmission. Google Drive has upped the ante for anywhere, any-device access to files in the cloud. In addition to sharing and syncing files, third-party software like Smartsheet can inter-operate inside Drive…,” writes Smartsheet’s Brent Frei in a blog post.

However, the knives are coming out as Google Drive’s appeal to small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) seems clear. Imation Scalable Storage cloud strategist Tom Gelson warns businesses to think twice. “Cloud backup is certainly a practical and cost-effective storage tier, but security of data stored in Google Drive — or any other cloud — is essential,” he said in an email to Cloudline. “The encryption standards that Google and other cloud storage providers put in place are essentially ineffective if a providers can simply reset the key if a user loses or forgets it. A ‘back door’ to encryption exposes the data to risk in the event that the cloud provider’s systems are hacked.”

With all the fuss coming from all angles, it seems clear Google Drive is going to be disruptive. Weigh in: Is Google Drive going to make big inroads at SMBs and the enterprise? With up to 16TB or storage, how big will Drive’s impact be?